ASUS ROG Strix X370-i AM4 Ryzen ITX Motherboard Preview

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We will never get used to the size of the packaging for ITX motherboards. It's extremely difficult when you've been dealing with giant flagship packaging to mention anything but how small both the box and the motherboard itself are. However, credit has to go to the manufacturers these days for not wasting the environment with needlessly large boxes. Some of us remember when games, on a single floppy or CD, came in boxes larger than this.

If you've seen the Strix Z370-i then much of the design of the X370 AM4 version will seem familiar. It must save them a fortune in tooling now that both the major brands - Intel and AMD - have got similar specifications and thus hardware on their main chipsets. We have WiFi, vital with the flexibility an ITX motherboard affords, M.2 socket for all your blisteringly fast storage needs as well as USB 3.1, USB front panels and SATA ports. Even the CPU area is kept very clean should you want to get into affordable sub-zero cooling.

Just because this is an ITX motherboard doesn't mean that ASUS have scrimped on features. Anything with the ROG branding has a certain level of expectation attached and the Strix range has hardly put a foot wrong since it first appeared. So we have AIO pump and fan headers as well as the AURA Sync lighting RGB LED strip headers that so characterise current Strix hardware.

I heavily disagree with the HTPC being obsolete. I make and sell quite a few of them. All of them using Node 302 and Node 202 case and even some Shuttle XPCs.

They are far from obsolete.

Great review though. Looks to be a decent motherboard all around.....as long as you have a GPU. Incredibly stupid that they left that out especially with the newer AMD CPUS w/iGPU ( I refuse to call them APU.....that belongs to the Audio Processing Unit in Sound Cards ) so that is quite dumb IMHO.Quote

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